How surprised would you be, if I walked up to you and told you that every human needs oxygen to survive? I'm assuming that you wouldn't at all be surprised - you might start feeling a little uneasy that a random stranger walked up to you with such a crazy question, but you wouldn't be surprised by the we-need-oxygen fact. Apparently, people are surprised that Ubuntu is not a democracy.

"Mandriva being unable to switch to the standard-compliant Network manager since so many years."

Erm. What 'standards' are you talking about?

It's supported by freedesktop, the closest thing to standards for anything that's GUI-related on linux. And last time I used Mandriva (2009 or 2009 spring I think), the default Mandriva One install still included some horribly impractical software in place of it.

(If I remember well, to connect to a wifi network, you must
-Right-click on the tray icon
-Click on some wireless-related menu item
-Wait until a window displays
-Wait for a refresh
-Click on the network you want to connect to
-Click "connect"
-Enter your user password
-Wait for a new window to show up
-Choose the right encryption method, type in your wi-fi password
-Wait until the network connects
-Close the first window that's still around
-Browse the web